Crossing Niagara Falls
It was breathtaking witnessing Nik Wallenda triumphantly walk a tightrope across Niagara Falls last Friday. Inspiring. This bold feat demonstrated skill, will, calm, determination and sheer guts – or madness. Can we martial artists learn from this daredevil?
Wallenda embodies our TanDao principle of triharmony power, the conscious unity of mind, body and spirit. For the act of walking on a two inch wire one foot after the other over the treacherous waters, he cultivated an impeccable sense of physical balance along with strength and endurance (body), intense mental concentration (mind), and the supreme belief in a force beyond himself to move confidently in the face of death (spirit).
In traditional Chinese and Japanese Buddhist and Daoist spiritual philosophy, extraordinary power is attributed to cultivating qi the invisible life force energy. In contrast, the critical thinking of Western science does not recognize this “spiritual” force, but uses Newtonian physics – biomechanics, gravity, acceleration, momentum, etc. – to explain feats of extraordinary power. As a martial artist, whether you are a use a modern rational scientific or traditional spiritual model, unknown forces exist.
Go To The Edge
If we liberate ourselves from the boundaries of our own terms and existing mindset (either western scientific or eastern intuitive) and simply open up to different practices and theories of power – be it qi, God, or gravity, etc. – we may also tap into so called unknown forces – mental, physical and spiritual – that contributed to Wallenda’s record breaking feat.
Evolving Martial Artists seeking the Way of Movement, universal principles of nature underlying all, go beyond their existing knowledge and skills to connect to new sources of power.
Learn a new way to power beyond punching and kicking.
Check out our TanDao Tiger Combat video, download, and ebook as an example of this merging of traditional Shaolin secrets and modern fight science.
Follow Nik Wallenda on Twitter
Keep exploring and practicing,
Lawrence Tan
Tags: daredevil, kung fu, lawrence tan, niagara falls, nik wallenda, tandao, walkthewire, wirewalk
